A return process is as important as sales for online retailers. If the return process is challenging or leaves customers frustrated, that negatively can lead to losing any future sales from the frustrated customers. This can also lead to poor customer satisfaction, and a review from the dissatisfied customer may discourage potential sales from other buyers. However, the returns processing is costly to retailers in two ways. First are the shipping and handling costs. The process of reversing an online order has many steps and includes the cost of the delivery as well as the many touches, each of which comes with a labor cost, to move a return item back into inventory stored in fulfillment centers. It is inevitable that the expense will reduce profit margins. The second type of cost is more difficult to quantify but the longer a return item stays out of circulation and is unable to sold, the less value it has and loss for the retailers.
To mitigate such problems, conventional inventory management systems transfer a return item without defects from a return center storing the return item to a fulfillment center for resale. In order to transfer the return item from the return center, workers in the return center place at least one return item in a pallet. The return item, placed in the pallet, is then transferred to the fulfillment center for resale. When the return item arrives at the fulfillment center, it goes through receiving processes of a kind that new products undergo. For example, when a return item arrives at the fulfillment center, a worker associated with the fulfillment center removes the return item from the pallet, scans a barcode attached to the return item, counts a quantity of the return item, places the return item in a tote, and scans a tote barcode associated with the tote. When the worker scans the tote barcode, the return item is stored in a database storing inventory within the fulfillment in the conventional management systems. The resources, however, may be better utilized by simplifying the processes for transferring a return item from a return center to a fulfillment center and receiving the return item at the fulfillment center. For example, a computerized system may provide unloading/receiving processes of a fulfillment center to a return center enabling a return item to undergo unloading/receiving processes at the return center to facilitate unloading/receiving and stowing processes at the fulfillment center.
Therefore, there is a need for improved methods and systems for transferring a return item from a return center to a fulfillment center.